List of science goofs

Because Futurama is a sitcom, with many of its gags/jokes based upon incorrect knowledge, and physically impossible methods, no one should actually criticise it for these "mistakes". This article nonetheless attempts to list the show's science goofs.

Contents

In the first episode, and later episodes the concept of Cryonics is often shown. The entire concept of the show is based around this element. However, no one has never been able to dry people back up, currently only resulting in their death. Though, it is considered that in the future there may be methods to reverse the freezing.

In many science fiction tales, ships travel with some sort of artificial gravity that drags people at 1G towards the bottom of the ship. However, this method is usually done for the sake of ease of filming. A more likely proposal would be to rotate the ship fast enough when flying in space, thus allowing its passengers to walk on the sides of the ship. In Futurama this achievement is prematurely described.

Most science fiction concepts uses a secondary universe (e.g. Hyperspace) where the speed of light is not a limit. In Futurama the speed of light was increased. Though this seems to be unimportant for how the Planet Express travels, where instead it moves the universe around. Could sound reasonable, but imagine the consequences if more than one ship were flying with these sort of engines.

In some episodes, they look out in space at something that is happening at the same time, but obviously is very far away. It would take years for light to reach them (even if the speed of light was increased).

Today, information travels at the speed of light. Good enough if you're sending the information around a planet. But if you were to send information to the Sun for instance, it would take 8 minutes. Imagine the delay if you were to send to a distant galaxy? Of course, there may exist an explanation for this, though not covered in Futurama, where communication wouldn't have to travel in space.

This may more be a historical error, than simply scientific. In "The Farnsworth Parabox" episode, it is explained that in Universe 1, the difference between that and Universe A is the outcome of a coin toss. However, if that were to be believed, every parallel universe would not appear exactly parallel to ours, except if it was a copy of ours. They may start the same (the universes that is), but due to human and animal nature, Earth may not even include humans. We should simply consider ourselves lucky for existing.

A common mistake in science fiction is to have sound in space, usually in space combat. This is also present in Futurama. The only way that sound would be possible is if there was an interplanetary medium. The odds of this happening are extremely slim, though. In fact, Firefly would be one of the few science fiction concepts that didn't use sound in space at all.

Whenever we see the Planet Express crew cruising in space, we often see stars in the background moving. Of course, just like our Sun doesn't appear to move while we walk down a street, so too would the stars not appear to move as the ship travels through space.